


hear me

by zombiesolace



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Aromantic Characters, Canon Rewrite, Character Study, Gen, Mythology - Freeform, amatonormativity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 07:49:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20831930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombiesolace/pseuds/zombiesolace
Summary: Narcissus and Echo are aromantic and that's that.





	hear me

**Author's Note:**

> I never did like how their story went. 
> 
> For the Carnival of Aros.

When he is old enough to travel, she seeks out Tiresias. 

It is a daunting trek. Tiresias lives among his mortal kind and she hasn’t left the mountain in centuries. There had been no reason to leave her riverbed. The journey is made more difficult still, by the babe she has swaddled in her arms. He is a fussy one. He never fails to make her smile. 

Three weeks and she finds herself standing before a lone house, stood apart from the rest of the foreign town. It is overgrown, branches reaching into the windows. For the birds, she supposes. 

The front door stands wide open.

She steps into the cool, dark of the building and calls his name. 

The man walks into the view and says her’s in return: “Liriope.”

She startles, her babe gurgling, and then relaxes. She had not sent word ahead of her arrival intentionally. Tiresias is a prophet and, just as she had hoped, he has been expecting her.

He gestures towards a pair of cushioned seats. “You must be tired.”

The chair envelops her sore body like the soft embrace of a lover. She sighs. “Mostly, I am curious.”

He brings wine and they sit. Birds flitter in and out of the room. She cannot see them, the space too dark and the birds too swift, but she hears their birdsong as though they whisper in her ear. Perhaps they will whisper in Tiresias’ ear soon.

“I am old,” she says. “I have lived a long life.”

Tiresias swills his wine around his glass. “I don’t often have nymphs visit me.”

“I am not here for myself,” she says, “I am here for my son.”

“Yes,” he agrees.

That gives Liriope pause, but only enough to wet her lips. “How long will he live?”

Tiresias leans toward her. “Let me see him.”

She uncovers the baby’s soft head and tilts him toward the prophet. He is a blind man, struck so by Athena, the Goddess herself. She does not know what he sees. 

A bird begins to sing and Tiresias cocks his head. They listen to the sweet melody for what feels like mere moments. She has walked for weeks and this will be over before she can begin counting. Trepidation winds up her spine.

The final note breaks and Tiresias sits back. 

He does not speak.

Liriope does. “And?”

With pursed lips and the lift of his shoulders, Tiresias says, “he will enjoy a long life, if he does not come to know himself.”

Usually, always even, Liriope has been able to accept the riddles of prophecy, the vague descriptions of the future, but this is her son. “He will live a long life?” 

Tiresia takes a sip of his wine. “He can.”

Liriope stands. “Thank you,” she says and strides from the strange darkness of the prophet’s house.

She walks, unseeing, for a while. Until her reason for being here protests. Her arms tighten around him involuntarily and he squawks. Liriope laughs, kissing his forehead. “Did you hear that, sweet boy? There’s hope.”

Narcissus grumbles, as he often does, and latches onto her dress. 

He can live a long life. If he does not know himself. She doesn’t like that yawning cause of death. At any time in his young life he could come to know himself and that would be his end.

Liriope begins the long walk home. Only time will tell. 

* * *

So the boy grows and ages. He is not like Liriope so she learns to fish and gather mortal food. She is Naiad, a nymph of the water. He can swim before he can walk. When he can walk she takes him fishing with her and slowly he learns too. He is a natural. How could he not be with her teaching him from such a young age?

She teaches him everything she can think of, as early as he is receptive to being taught. She does not know how long he will have, but she can give him this power. 

The other nymphs tell her not to worry. They tell her there is no rush, but she knows. Narcissus rises with the sun each day and sleeps when it sets. She is aware of the passing of time like no nymph before her.

And so he catches fish as cleverly as any hawk. He knows where to find and how to prepare every edible plant and herb their mountain grows. Every inch of the mountain is his to explore and each day he runs further and further to see more of it and still be home in time for bed. 

When he is eight he stumbles upon the nearest town and is _ enchanted _. He finds himself lost in the market and the noise of the people. He stays, looking at pretty trinkets and smelling warm baked goods, until the sky turns dark. 

He stumbles home. He steps so loudly in the shallows that Liriope fears he is injured. The boy falls into her reaching arms, rambling about the bright clothing, the soft furred cats, and the sweet treat a vendor gave him. 

He is not like her, Liriope knows. 

She leaves her sisters and moves them to the outskirts of the town. They still live without a roof over their heads, the canopy of the trees more than enough shelter, but there is little water in this place. She learns the land they have pitched upon and teaches herself to farm.

Narcissus farms with her and when he strays now, it is toward the town.

* * *

On that same mountain, the youngest of the Oread is growing also. She does not age like Narcissus, for she is a nymph, but still she grows. 

We shall call her Echo, the name you know her by. There is another name before and there will be many after, but for this story, this is the name that matters. 

With all the time in the world, she moves slowly at first. Her sisters are decades, if not centuries, older and she emulates them. When they wake it is upon harsh rocky slopes. They lounge in the dust and the dirt, their bodies rough and comfortable upon the ground. The sun shines upon them, turning their skin ever darker. Days are spent like this, until someone’s stomach rumbles and they move to green grottoes to have a feast. For years the feasts are calm events, much the same as their day to day lives only with ambrosia on their lips and wine in their bellies. Yes, they are lazy gatherings that Echo sleeps away. That is, until, a new road is cut across the mountain. 

Oreads are the patrons of travellers. It is their duty and pleasure to help mortals through dangerous passages. Mount Cithaeron has few of those. Echo has seen a sister or two of hers peel away over the years to assist a hunter that has gotten lost or a caravan of folks that have broken a wheel. She’d never gone along, too young to be of any help. 

Now she is still young but also _ bored _. All her sisters do is sleep, and eat, and tie their hair in increasingly complicated fashions. There are visitors sometimes, mortals who come with flowers and music, who her sisters vanish with for a time, but she is not allowed to play with them.

The first mortal she ever speaks to is an old woman, limping along the freshly carved road. 

Echo sees her from the mountain above and bounds to help. It is _ her _ turn to disappear with a mortal. She curls her arm through the bend of women’s frail elbow and is rewarded with a conversation. 

Not a conversation, a memoir. 

The woman in her old age has many stories to tell. The road is rough in its new age and Echo makes the most of it. She listens to each story with wide eyes and a litany of questions.

She’d thought she’d heard stories before. Folklore, myths, and legends her sisters tell one another over and over. Stories about gods and goddesses, but her sisters know those people. The stories meander and break away from the adventure turning to chatter about what so-and-so is doing now, who so-and-so is doing now.

Echo returns from her walk with the old woman and insists that they have a feast. Stories are best told to an audience, she knows now, and she’s ready to perform. 

* * *

Eight years pass. Narcissus grows strong and sure from the work on the farm. His hair burns bright white like the sands of the coast and his olive skin warms from the work. 

With age he has quieted further still. No fish, nor deer, nor mountain lion hear his approach. The sheep don’t startle when he watches over them, for they know his hands are gentle and often hold a crisp apple from town for them to nibble upon.

Those same eight years pass for Echo, but nymphs don’t count time as we do. They speak of the animals migrating to and fro. They comment on the progress or regression of nature around them. They plan their next feast with glee. For feasts are exciting things nowadays. 

Echo looks much the same as she once did. Only now her eyes are bright with observation, her hands flush with movement. She _ parades _ about the place, pantomiming her latest tale. Is it truth or lie? Exaggeration or miracle? Ask and she will only smile. 

The pair, as you may have guessed, garner attention.

* * *

The first person to confess their adoration of Narcissus is a girl. She has a name, but Narcissus will not remember it. She is a year younger and swift with the loom. The shawl she makes him is soft in colour and texture. 

Narcissus takes one look at her and says, “Why would I want this?” 

He isn’t talking about the shawl.

* * *

The first person Echo tells she loves is a mortal boy she has been tumbling in the hay with for a couple of weeks. More than long enough she believes. They’ve done little more than kiss, but she knows he’s interested in quite a bit more and she’ll give it to him once he says he loves her.

He doesn’t. His hands fall away from her hips, her dress sliding back down where he edged it from. 

“Oh, don’t do that,” she says. 

He struggles out of the hay with an excuse that doesn’t make a lick of sense and he will spend the rest of his life ducking away whenever he sees her.

Perhaps it hadn’t been long enough for love. 

* * *

The second person to confess their attraction to Narcissus is a boy. He works in the local bakery, but its flowers he brings. Lush, blooming irises that he has to hold to the side or else they will hide his face. 

Narcissus will not remember his face either way. 

“I have no interest,” he says. 

The boy's face falls. “In men?”

“In anyone.”

* * *

The second person Echo falls for is a pretty girl who works where people go for potions and blessings. They haven’t talked much, but her laugh makes Echo feel rich no matter how much money she spends in the store. 

And spend she does. She buys more than she needs and gives half to the girl. She tries to hand them back each time, but Echo insists. This goes on for weeks and far longer than with the boy before, she makes sure of it.

One day she comes to the store and the owner stops her in the entrance. 

“The gifts need to stop,” she says.

Echo peeks past her, confused, and the witch woman holds up a hand. “She’s told you she can’t take them.”

“No more gifts,” she agrees and tries to step forward.

The woman frowns. “It’s not the gifts she doesn’t want, it’s you.”

Echo stills. She spent an awful amount of stolen money here.

* * *

The third person drawn to Narcissus goes home in tears. As does the fourth. The fifth ends up bruised after he reached out to touch and the sixth doesn’t try to confess, but everyone knows she wants to.

People talk.

* * *

The third person Echo falls for tells her that where he is from sex means they are committed to one another. He lies. Echo cries for a week, or maybe it is a day, and then she spots the fourth person. They have sex soon after because she really had enjoyed herself. After, as they lie together, she tells the girl about the boy who lied and says, “you won’t leave me like he did, will you?”

The girl has far more tact than Echo. She dodges answering by saying how horrid that boy must have been and kisses her gently. They part ways a week later when the girl says she has a sweetheart and Echo tells her that she’s doing it wrong. 

“We get one person each,” she says.

The girl struggles to summon a smile. “I do hope you find yours then.”

Echo knows she will but after the fifth and sixth people find her no respite she begins to have doubts.

* * *

“Narcissus,” his mother says.

He hums in acknowledgement and continues to descale his catch. 

“How are you?”

He pauses, frowns. “Good.”

“What have you been getting up to lately?” 

He gestures to the fish. The deer strung up out back.

“I ran into your hunting party yesterday. They seem like nice boys.”

He juts out his bottom lip. “Some of them are and some of them aren’t.”

“Oh?” 

He finishes his fish and reaches for the next one.

“Some of them are nice?” 

Narcissus throws her a frown. “Yes.”

She is smiling. “Any of them in particular?”

He is scowling. “No.”

“You’re a man now,” she says. “You are great at many things. By far the best hunter in town.”

Narcissus flicks his knife with a slight smile. The fish is descaled in seconds. “That is true.”

“I imagine you killed that deer with one arrow.”

His chest puffs. “I did.”

“Those boys must have been impressed.”

He lets his hand drop and the knife clatters. They had been. Some of them too impressed for his liking.

“What about them?” he says.

“Perhaps you should spend more time with them, outside of hunting.”

“Why?”

She kneels beside him, not minding the fish scales. She has never minded the mess. He loves her dearly. He likes them and life like this. 

“I want you to have more,” she says. 

He shakes his head. “More than what?” 

* * *

Echo smiles as another mortal looks her way. She winks and wiggles her shoulders. 

“Oh, stop,” her sister says with a laugh.

“Why should I?” Echo tumbles down next to her sister on the grassy knoll that overlooks the feast. This feast is more of a party. Mortals have been invited, a few more magical beings too.

“Relax,” she says, “there are plenty of mortals to play with.”

Echo throws her hands up in the air to be dramatic. “_ Where _ are they?”

“There are always more.”

“No, I like these ones. These ones have seen me perform, these ones like me.” She’d bound up onto a fallen tree at the first opportunity and not a word had been spoken from her audience until she’d finished. 

Her sister smiles. “That was a good story. Was it true?”

Echo flips her hair over her shoulder. “I can’t recall.”

They tussle until their drinks spill and their laughter cannot be contained. 

“What I mean to say—” her sister begins.

“What do you mean to say?”

“I _ say _, there is no rush to find love.”

“I must love _ someone _,” Echo insists.

A hand is waved dismissively in response. “You will.”

“And it will feel wonderful?”

“It will.”

Echo sighs happily. That is what she wants to hear. No one has felt right yet and that is not right. 

* * *

It is nearly time they met.

* * *

Echo is in the marketplace when she sees him. She’s pretending to look at a string of wooden beads when really she can’t take her eyes off the witch’s shop. She’s scripting a story and in her mind’s eye there is a magic spell of some kind. She wants facts to colour her fictional tale all the more real. Except she doesn’t know how long it’s been or whether that girl still works there or if she is even welcome.

She fingers the beads. No matter what she tries no one loves her back. Perhaps it should be a love spell. That would be romantic. 

A hush steals over the crowd and Echo spins trying to find the source. The marketplace has been a wonderful source of inspiration over the years. She’s found sentences strung together in such a way that is pretty to the ear and gossip from far away places staring far away people the likes of which she’s never heard before. 

“It’s that boy again,” someone says.

“Whose heart does he break this time?”

She sees his hair first. So bright it is unmissable. He stands tall, chin lifted proudly. His body is twisted away from the person he speaks to. She can’t see the others face for the shade, but held in trembling hands is a beautiful ornate mirror. 

It is almost as handsome as the boy. 

“No,” he says.

“I have not said—”

“I know what you want and so I know what you will say.”

The mirror lowers an inch and the hands stop staking. 

Echo takes mental note of it all. This will make for a wonderful story.

“No,” the boy, or perhaps he is a man. He says it again and is turned fully away now. Curious, he does not leave.

Echo sneaks closer. She winds through the crowd. They are like a herd of deer, stationary with ears pricked. 

The mirror turns to face to the floor. “You will not give me even a chance?”

“Why,” he says deliberately slow, “should I?”

Echo understands that as courtship goes a person is so possessed by another that they are overcome with longing. Sometimes there is heartache, but it is all worth it in the end. It is strange to see someone rebuffed from the outside. Their bodies strain valiantly, one leans toward and the other away. Neither seem like pleasant torments to feel. 

The mirror hits the hard ground and she sees the precious metal of it bend and warp. “Your self-obsession will be your undoing.”

A smile grows on the boy’s face. He tips his head back and laughs. It is only now that he leaves. 

The mirror is left to lie alone in the dust.

“He’s an arrogant boy,” someone says. “No one is good enough for him.”

Echo tilts her head, too confused by the first statement to hear the second. All humans are arrogant in some shape or form. Why is his arrogance, above all, unacceptable?

She forgets him quickly. Everyone will find someone in the end, that is how it goes.

* * *

Now it is said that someone, so spurned by Narcissus’s slight, implored the gods. Their passion so twisted that it is Nemesis, goddess of vengeance, who answers. Perhaps a broken heart can do such damage. Perhaps this is the gods meddling, as they do. Perhaps this cruelty is a reflection of humanity. 

Perhaps this is simply how love stories play.

“If he should love, deny him what he loves.”

* * *

The Oreads are never without a covetous visitor. 

When Echo returns she finds not her sisters, but Zeus.

“You,” he says. 

Echo knows when to hold her tongue and when to let it run free. She does little with that knowledge however. “What of I?”

“My wife will arrive soon, make sure she does not see us.” He does not wait for a response, nor does he issue a threat. Why would he? He is the King of Gods.

“What story shall I tell today?” she asks the trees about her. She does not wait for a response, but if she had then she might have heard their whisper of warning. 

Echo sunbathes on a large flat stone when Hera strides to their rocky outcrop. She is the only nymph in sight.

“Where are your sisters?” The Queen of Gods demands.

Echo smiles. She enjoys ad lib almost as much as a well thought out story. And so, with great glee, she begins her tale. 

Neither party will remember what is said later. It will matter not to either of them. Hera will remember being misled by a nymph and the nymph will forget it all in her grief. 

Echo does not know how long she speaks for, but it is long enough for Hera to grow impatient.

“Answer my question! Where are your sisters?”

“We are nearing the end, my Queen, soon—”

Hera cuts her hand between them. “I know trickery when I see it.”

“No,” Echo says, concern creeping upon her. “I—”

“_ You _,” Hera says, “shall forfeit your tongue with which you have cheated me. Your voice will remain endless, but no longer yours.”

Echo swallows thickly and without her say, she whispers: “No longer yours.”

* * *

Narcissus inhales the last of his meal and has barely finished swallowing before he speaks. “And our parting words were ‘Your self-obsession will be your undoing’. How could I not be charmed?”

In truth, Narcissus was equal parts angered and confused by this judgement. He felt rather strongly that it was everyone else who was obsessed with him.

His mother hums as she cleans off her plate. “In front of everyone at the market?”

“It is always a public affair.” 

They wash the food scraps from their plates together, as always. Tonight, though, they are quiet and deep in thought. 

He isn’t sure he will be going into town for a while. It is there that he is always accost. Here on the farm, at home, he is left alone.

For the most part.

“Perhaps we should visit the mountain soon. There are many nymphs you have not met.”

“Mother,” he groans.

She pulls him out front of their house. They sit, side by side, and look out across the plains. The furrows of their farmed land run straight ahead and above the fields the starred sky watches on.

“There is no one for me,” he says.

Her hands are twisted in her lap. “There could be.”

“What of you?” he says. “Where is your beloved?”

Liriope smiles. “Besides you? I am still searching.”

Narcissus leans into her side. “Why?”

“It is something I want. The feeling is most lovely and I get lonely at times.”

His stomach twists. It takes great strength not to ask ‘am I not enough?’

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says, through clenched teeth. “I do not get lonely. I never have and I never will.”

His mother brushes her hand through his hair fondly. “You are a stubborn boy.”

Narcissus grins slightly. “I am, the most.”

Liriope settles into her seat. She has not aged a day since his birth and likely will not in his lifetime, no matter how long he lives. He should fear the unknowns of his future, he knows, but she has taught him contentment. “I enjoyed tonight’s meal.”

Narcissus smiles. “We shall have it again.”

It should be a night like most. This conversation is one they have often. The night follows its usual path. Dinner, talk of the day, admiration of the night, plans for tomorrow, and finally: sleep. 

And there we divert, for Nemesis has been summoned. 

Like a plume of smoke she twists in his window that night and settles upon his pillow. He shivers in his sleep, the breath upon his ear whisked away into his dreams. 

“You shall find love,” she promises, “when you next look to yourself.”

* * *

Echo finds her sisters in the nearest grotto, all laid about and satisfied. She’s already in tears, having tried to shout their names and heard nothing but silence.

She stumbles into her sisters’ arms and her tongue loosens.

“Oh, honey, what’s wrong?!”

“Wrong!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Wrong!”

She shakes her head and claps her hands over her mouth, powerless.

“Tell us, sister, what happened to you?”

“To you!”

“She’s distraught.”

“Distraught!”

“Here, sit down.”

“Down!”

She can shout the words now, or whisper them if she pleases but that is all. Echo has known the importance of inflection since she first heard an old woman’s harrowing adventures. Her tone means little now, with spoken word so out of her control. 

Echo scrambles to her knees, still repeating her sisters’ words unconsciously. She tears at the lush green grass until a patch of dirt is revealed. Without care she shoves her sisters’ concerned hands away and scrawls messily into the dirt: ‘I’m cursed.’

Someone gasps. “Cursed?”

Echo chokes out the wretched word and finds no relief. 

They ask more questions and she writes messily with her fingertips until her nails are caked under with thick, black dirt. 

She tells them and they hold her, whispering words of comfort and assurance that turn acidic and mocking when she repeats them in turn.

Echo struggles free of their embrace and staggers away, calling her own name angrily into the night.

* * *

She spends the day, or perhaps it is a week, in a cave. A waterfall blocks its mouth and silences the world. 

Echo keeps her eyes closed and breathes. She cannot hear the sounds of her breath but each passing feels momentous. This is the only sound of her own she now controls. There will be no more stories, not even in pantomime, for there is no way she could bid a crowd to silence.

Even if she could, why would she want to? She treasures every laugh, and cheer, every wounded noise, and barbarous swear. Now they mean nothing. How could she or anyone concentrate on a story with her copying the world around her like a _ fool. _

What does she have if not her stories? Her sisters, truly and endlessly, but she has never wanted to speak as they do. They are far too concerned with their own lives and Echo wants more! She craves a good tale and some days is full to bursting with a story of her own. To spend the rest of her life on this mountain would be torture. So she must leave.

The cave drips hauntingly around her. It is not a large space and yet alone here, it feels cavernous. What is worse to be alone and silent or accompanied and a parrot?

She cannot be alone. There is no beauty in being alone. Only pity and strange looks. 

Echo stands suddenly. Perhaps she can find someone who is mute or taciturn? A lover that will understand her for once. They could learn to communicate silently, with written word or the shape of their hands. She could be held and comforted without a care. It would be beautiful. 

Perhaps, Echo thinks as she sprints through the rain of the waterfall, now she can finally behave in a way that will allow her to be loved in return.

* * *

Narcissus wakes with the sun, as he does every morning. Today he will hunt deer with a party of friends and bring home a feast that will last him and his mother weeks. 

He leads them to a clearing on the mountain, one frequented by stag and doe alike. Tracks and trails lead away from the clearing.

“This one is freshest,” he says. The broken branches still ooze healing sap. 

“That will take us further from home,” someone says. It is someone’s cousin, he can’t remember whose. 

It will take them higher up the mountain, unlike the others that wind shallowly at its side. “We will not have to walk as far to find deer.”

No one replies. Things have been tense between them of late. He knows it is because of what is being said in the village. He is being ostracised. 

Tears prick his eyes. Perhaps he should apologise for his rude dismissals. Narcissus sets his jaw. Perhaps people should leave him alone.

“Come, or do not,” he says and starts on the deer’s trail. 

They don’t follow.

After a short while though, someone does. 

Narcissus doesn’t stop, but he does slow. He listens carefully for the footsteps. He’d heard his so-called friends leaving in the other direction and long taught them how to better step silently. It is not them.

Alone in this forest he should be more concerned, but he is a good hunter and has been stalked by creature and man alike. He notches an arrow and forges onward. No one can get the better of him.

* * *

Echo sees his hair first. It is as brilliant as the sun, a beckon that beckons for attention and the gentlest of touches.

She remembers him from the market, as pretty and removed as a statue.

He’d also been quiet and unshakeable in the face of a turning crowd. That is what she needs, someone who will not speak and someone who will stand by her side when she proves to be unusual. 

It is said love cures all. Perhaps she can learn to live like this if there is someone at her side. If she cannot perform, perhaps she can have this.

It is said that love is enough. 

She follows him.

“Who is here?” he calls. His voice so low she almost doesn’t hear him. 

But she does: “Here!”

He turns to face her. They are separated by dense trees and thick branches. They remain hidden from one another. “Come here.”

“Come here,” she says.

He stalks toward her. “Avoid me not.”

Echo trips in her excitement. “Avoid me not!”

He stills and with great frustration says, “Oh let us come together!”

Echo shoves through the foliage, beaming. He wants her and much as she wants him! “Oh let us come together,” she cries. 

She flings herself from the embrace of the forest and into his. 

With a yell of surprise he shoves her away. “Take your hands off of me. You shall not touch. Better death than anyone ever caress me!”

Echo falters. “Caress me.”

He makes a disgusted noise and picks up his fallen bow. “Never.”

Echo curls her arms around herself. “Never.”

He looks at her under the newly made mess of his hair. “Who are you?”

If no one wanted her before, how could anyone possibly want her now? The repetition is an annoyance to bare alone, but curses cast great suspicion. Oh, she will be asked what she did wrong and the world will pity her all the more. It _ is _ a pity. Had this not happened to her she would have thought it made a great story.

“You,” her mouth says dutifully.

“Yes,” he sneers, “should you keep repeating everything that I say then it would seem indeed that you are me and have no self of you own.”

Echo fades into the forest, for she fears this callous boy is right.

* * *

Narcissus considers following the nymph. Though not for long. Despite her distress, the attention she gave repulses him and that _ kind _ of attention - he cannot stand. 

She is a nymph and this is her home. Whatever her woe, there are worse places to be.

It takes him a moment to find the deer trail. It has been somewhat trampled by their meeting, but not irreversibly so. 

He continues on. 

The trail leads him to a river. 

It takes him to the water's edge and at it the trail ends. The deer must have passed through these shallows. These are not deep waters and can be easily walked. 

Narcissus, removing his shoes, looks to the water.

And, just as Nemesis promised and Tiresias warned, he finds himself. 

* * *

Echo lies herself out on the dustiest and driest outcrop of the mountain. The sun bakes her skin until the dead of it peels away and tender new skin is revealed beneath. 

She does not wish to be alone so she tells herself all her favourite stories. The epics that made her convulse with laughter and shake with tears the first time she heard them. Those feelings rise within her once more, raw as she is. Now she possesses all the time in the world to perfect those tellings. 

Bitter tears leak down her cheeks. Inflection and tone are hers to command, but only within the restrictive confines of her mind. She feels as though she is suffocating, unable to scream for help.

Through the scope of her eyes all she can see is endless blue sky and soft rolling clouds. The wind brushes her skin lovingly and somewhere a bird whistles. It is a pretty tune. 

Echo takes a breath and another and another and another and—whistles in return. 

Her tears dry somewhere between the sound of her voice and the touch of the wind. She thanks the breeze, the best she can, by mimicking the way it rustles in her ears. There is something soothing about the sound.

Days pass.

Or perhaps it is weeks.

* * *

Echo remakes a home for herself on that mountain. She travels deep into the forests and wades through the fiercest of waters, listening. The world is alive with sounds that she does not have to, but somehow still can, imitate. She sings for the birds and they teach her to rise with the sun. She keeps an ear out for the lizards and they teach her to rest at sunset. 

After a time she hears the soft padding of big cats and as she follows their footsteps and copies their stealthy movements, she learns to hear _ more. _ How often had she trampled over the mountain, missing its wonders? 

She visits her sisters and pleads with them, in pantomime, not to speak.

They listen. 

The Oread feasts turn quiet once more. Her sisters contain their outbursts of emotions now, for Echo has new stories to tell.

She pantomimes the births and deaths she has seen on the mountain. She dances as the trees do under each turn of weather. She leads them on mysterious walks, showing them secrets that have not been discovered by them despite the centuries they have lived there. 

And all the while she whispers like the wind.

This way of storytelling, it does not feel the same as it used to, but there is an edge to her now. There is something lived-in about her stories that she had never felt before. 

Their adventures end the moment someone emotes with sound. Echo does not wait, she runs. Her sisters never hear her repeat their words, but she always does. 

* * *

Narcissus reaches hesitantly to touch the water. The man reaches back. A smile, wobbly but hopeful, grows on his face and he sees it in return. The tip of his finger brushes the water and the man vanishes.

Narcissus sobs, his dry lips cracking. “Why, my love? Why must you do this so?”

Slowly the man reappears. He is so shy, but if Narcissus is careful, if he is ever so careful, they can sit together a while. 

* * *

Months pass. She grows weak with sorrow. Some days she cannot reach her sisters. They shout and laugh and speak so loudly she hears them from long before she sees them. 

No matter how she tries she must parrot the spoken word. And that is enough to turn her around. 

On her worst days she fades, just a little. Never enough for her to vanish entirely, but more than enough to scare her.

Most days, she simply exists. Nothing more, nothing less.

* * *

She sees his hair first.

She does not recognise him.

Months have passed. 

* * *

He does not know how long he lies there. It is long enough that he recognises his reflection. He sees the mold growing on his clothes. The way his hair hangs limp and glues stickily to his skin. 

Narcissus had never truly talked with his mother about how long he would live. She had mentioned the prophecy, true, but that was all. His stomach _ burns _. For too long he has gone without food, without water. And he has suffered for it. His eyes hurt, his tongue is thick in his mouth. He leaves his hand in the water now, for he cannot lift it to reach out and touch without great effort. He suffers, but it does not kill him. 

Narcissus is glad for this, at least, he does not want to leave his reflection's side. Not for as long as he shall live.

* * *

Echo approaches him fearfully. 

He should be dead. He looks it. 

She closes her eyes and listens. A hog snorts in the distance, the trees rustle, a bird coos. 

Echo crouches beside the boy and coos. 

His body twitches and she flinches back. Is this how she appears? Sunken and lifeless, all but a corpse in name. 

She coos again and reaches for his shoulder. He mumbles something, intelligibly. She does not have to repeat it and so her confidence grows. 

He faces the water and is hidden beneath his hair. She does not wish to touch the bright locks she once, so long ago, wished to caress. She slides neatly into the water and he yells. 

She yells with him, stumbling back. 

“Stop!”

“Stop!”

He sags toward the water, his hand flapping above the surface. His reflection does the same and he relaxes.

“What do you want?” he asks.

“Do you want?” she says. He turns his eyes up to look at her, his cheek pressed into the dirt. She knows now he is a boy, or was one, as he no longer looks like one. His skin is paper thin and cracked. 

He laughs. “That is all I do.”

“I do,” she murmurs. Is this what she used to sound like? Strange, she has not thought of love since she last saw him. 

He closes his eyes and blinks them open, exhaustion hanging heavily on his lashes. “Are you cursed?”

She holds off, her body shaking with pain so she can nod. “You cursed?”

“I am in love,” he says. He looks to the water, to his reflection, and smiles.

Echo stares in horror. “Love.”

“Yes, love,” he says scornfully. “Do you know it?”

Perhaps she did, or perhaps she never did, but she is no longer sure she cares for it. She longs for her sisters and a crowd of eager faces. That is what she loves, that is what she knows. 

“Do you know it?” she says. She gestures to his face and then the face of his reflection.

He sighs. “I know it is me, yes, my reflection. My perfect other half.”

“Other half.” The pair of them do not hold a candle to what he used to be. She wishes she knew his name. He is a farmer of some sort and the most impolite of them. He had refused to love with as much passion as she had craved it. 

This is the third time they are meeting. The first they had not spoken. The second he had broken her heart. And this time they find themselves met with reflection. 

Echo feels for him. Just as she, he has been cursed by the Gods and perhaps also they have both been cursed by the laws of love. Cursed to abide by that which they do not belong to.

She leans forward gently and disturbs his reflection.

“Stop!” he shouts. “Leave! You strange girl, do not plague me once more.”

“Once more,” she says and puts her hand through his face again.

“No! Oh no, please don’t, please.” Something in his seems to crack. He dissolves into broken noise. Echo finds herself matching him, softly. He cannot cry, she realises, he has no water for tears. 

“I hate this horrid existence,” he says. “Why must you torment me, my love? Even now I see your mouth moving, but you give me no comfort. Oh I wish to hear your voice, just once.”

“Your voice,” Echo says, slowly, “just once.”

She drags herself from the water and runs.

* * *

She had liked that the witch shop girl gave no gifts in return.

She had liked the boys who wanted nothing but to touch and be touched in return.

She had liked the girl, who already had a sweetheart, until she had said there was room for her as well. 

Echo had liked those she had loved most when there was no talk of love.

* * *

Somehow his mother finds him.

Narcissus feels a deep sadness well within in him and yet he is unmoved.

“My son,” she cries. “My sweet son, what is this?”

“Please,” he says. “Leave.”

She wraps her arms around his decaying body and lifts him to her. He struggles, fear sparking through his body.

“No! No! You cannot keep us apart!”

“Who has done this to you?”

“No one,” he says, “no one. We belong together.”

“Who?” she pleads, sagging. She strokes a hand through his hair and it tangles in the mess of it. He has been gone for so long. Time has never felt so precious. “Who?”

He points to his reflection.

Liriope looks at her son in the water and she looks at her son on land. She looks until tears blur her sight. 

“You have come to know yourself?” 

“I have,” he says, pleased. “It is love.”

Liriope weeps. She lowers her son with shaking hands. She presses her palms to his back and beneath his shirt and skin she feels his bones press back. Soon bone is all that will be left of him. 

“This is not the end,” she promises him, herself. She kisses his forehead and kisses him again. “I will return with food and water. And then I will return with more. You need it.”

Narcissus does not watch her stand, but part of him itches to turn. 

“Stay,” she implores. “Stay right here.”

“Where else would I be?” he asks. And for a moment he is disoriented by the question, but only for a moment.

His reflection smiles happily at him, his skin hollow and grey.

* * *

Echo runs to the witch. She whispers offers for fish, haggled prices, and thanks under her breath as she winds through the market. 

She steps up to the entrance and the woman blocks her way.

“What can I help you with?” she asks.

Echo places her hand over her mouth and listens. The market stretches out behind her, dozens of voice at her back. 

“Please,” she finds.

The witch woman tilts her head in consideration. She has dark, knowing eyes. With an elegant twist of her wrist, she gestures Echo into the store. 

The space is at once crowded and empty. Books and potions line the walls. They are the only people within.

“Penelope has moved on.”

Echo looks at the woman, but does not see her. Penelope. She cannot remember what it was that she liked about the girl. 

The woman settles at her desk. “What is it you wish for?”

Echo smiles, a sharp grin growing on her. “Wish for?”

She walks about the shop, taking her time. Her ears remain open and listen outside. Her eyes search the shelves before her. 

A book stands dusty and offside. Within its title is the word ‘spell’. She taps her finger again it.

The woman raises an eyebrow. “You wish for a spell. A spell to do what?”

“To do what?” she says, looking around the store. There is no loose paper, no wet ink or liquid she can write with. She touches her fingers to her lips and gestures from them.

“You wish to speak. Speak how?”

Echo presses her hands to her face. She holds off, pain raking up her throat. “How?” More than anything, she wishes to speak for herself. Perhaps she should forget the boy, the rude boy that she does not know the name of, and ask for something of her own. 

Perhaps she should and perhaps she will, but she has far more time than he does. 

She finds what she is looking for with her head bowed in her moment of reflection. Echo drops and grabs the book excitedly, all but throwing it at the woman.

She is met with a surprised look. “That will be expensive. Animation is strange magic.”

Echo has no coin on her. She finds a seller outside refusing someone’s service. “No money,” she says.

The witch gives her a long look. “That may make this spell even more expensive.”

“What price?” Echo finds and repeats.

The woman shrugs. “Give me something you value.”

Echo stills. “Value.” Perhaps she can be free of this curse after all.

She touches her fingers to her lips once more, and gestures from them.

The witch straightens. “Your voice? That is too much.”

Echo is holding up two fingers before she has time to think about it. She points back at the spell book, murmuring cursed words under her breath.

The witch nods in agreement. “What will the second spell be?”

Echo searches the shop high and low. She has an idea, a little seedling of an idea that she cannot nurture if she does not know what is on offer. Just as she is beginning to get desperate, she finds a piece of paper held beneath the weight of a stone. Many-tongued, it reads.

The witch stares at her when she raises it. “You cannot have no tongue and many tongues, not at once.”

Echo stands her ground and waits. “I can.”

The woman deliberates. Echo holds her tongue that is not her tongue and grasps the woman’s hand.

The witch smiles. “I feel something in you that wasn’t there before.”

Echo, in her impatience, rolls her wrist. “Thank you.”

The witch laughs and without notice or pause, begins chanting softly. 

The words wash over Echo and her tongue cannot wrap around them. At first it is because they are foreign and slippery. The twists and turns of them are unfamiliar to her practised speech. Soon a knot grows in her throat and her tongue begins to tingle. It stills, no longer enchanted.

Echo presses her hand to her mouth, and smiles. 

She can understand what the witch is saying. 

* * *

Narcissus heaves with each breath. 

“Beloved,” he whispers to see his reflection mouth the word back.

“My mother called me that,” he says, or thinks, he isn’t sure.

He doesn’t know how long it has been since she left him. Perhaps it has been days. There is food piled up beside him. Had she roused him to eat? He would have refused. 

“My love,” he says and reads his own lips.

A shadow falls over him. Narcissus squints at the shape and recognises the nymph. She leans over his reflection.

“No!” he shouts. His body lurches forward as she pours a thick liquid over the face of his lover.

The nymph shoots him a panicked look and hurls him back from the water. He lays stunned.

“My love?” he hears. 

Narcissus looks at the forest around him. The nymph stands smugly over him, unspeaking.

“Beloved?” he hears. 

It is the voice of a man and it comes from the water. He hauls himself up and looks at himself.

His reflection smiles. Narcissus is not smiling.

“There you are,” his reflection says. “I feared you had left me.”

“Never,” Narcissus says automatically. He watches the nymph leave and waves slowly when she does. She vanishes into the treeline.

His reflection calls for him. It is strange to hear his name after so long, particularly with such affection.

“How are you…”

“Alive?” his reflection finishes. “I do not know, but it is a miracle. We can finally be together.”

“How?” Narcissus asks. 

“How,” his reflection repeats with a slight frown. “Like this, forever.”

Narcissus’ mouth pulls. “That is ridiculous.”

His reflections face breaks into surprise, then hurt.

He jumps to appease him. “My love!” The words seem to sour on his tongue. “I— I only mean that we cannot stay here...I have a home.”

“A home of our own? That sounds wonderful.”

Narcissus’ eyes shutter. “It is the home my mother and I built.”

“We shall fill it with love.”

Narcissus scowls. “It is already full of love.”

He feels nothing for the reflection’s hurt this time. His stomach spasms with pain and he reaches for the buckskin. The cool water flows over his tongue and down his parched lips. In delight, he sinks against the cool grass.

“Beloved? I cannot see you.”

He scoffs. “Good.”  
  
“Narcissus,” his reflection, no, the water man says. “Let me see you.”

He smiles and breaks bread. “No.”

His tired body protests at first, but before long, he feels comfortable eating again.

“We cannot spend forever like this,” the man pleads.

“You are temporary,” Narcissus says, “as was our love.”

The man begins to cry. It is a sorrowful sound that rouses Narcissus. 

“Here,” he says, “eat.”

The man of the water wobbles, his face rippling with tears. 

Narcissus frowns. “I’m sorry to hurt you, I am, but you are weak.”

“I want nothing, but you,” the man says. 

Narcissus feels as though his food will come back up.

“I’m sorry,” he manages. 

“Please,” the young man says, “I love you.”

Then, perhaps a touch cruelly for this situation, Narcissus laughs. “We are nothing alike.”

Grief takes the man and he begins to fade. It one last attempt to reach his beloved, he splashes a hand upon the bank. Narcissus flinches away and the man, heartbroken, lets go. 

Narcissus watches the water until he sees nothing but his reflection once more.

* * *

A flower grows where the dying hand struck. It unfurls bright and yellow like the sun. You know of it. You have seen them grow. 

* * *

Their stories do not end here, though this one will. 

Their bodies take a long time to heal. Their hearts twice as long, but they do. They heal.

Echo leaves the mountain. She travels as far and as wide as she can, learning languages by ear. She writes, she pantomimes. Her sisters tell stories of her now. She cannot speak, but she is heard.

Over time her plays become famous. Her first story is that of a man who refuses to love and a nymph who is desperate to love. People ask her time and time again, is it true?

Echo simply smiles. 

The gods believe it is and perhaps that makes it true.

Narcissus stays on the mountain. Liriope returns them the place that was her home and they make it so once more. 

She asks him not to hide away from humanity only once. He does not answer her, but the next week she finds him teaching a group of children how to notch arrows. He teaches them as she once taught him.

He teaches those that need it most to hunt. He teaches them to survive, to be resilient, to take care of themselves. 

Narcissus grows and in his adulthood he takes in a few orphans. He loves them dearly and they love him so. Liriope is delighted by the additions to their family. He teases her for it.

Echo visits him once or twice a decade. They know one another by name now, and perhaps a little better than that. There is a story written somewhere, under a name you do not know, dedicated to _companionship_. 

She outlives him by centuries, but he nearly lives for two. He lives long into old age. 

It was foretold, after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> listen like,, being aro is the best


End file.
